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Amoeblog posts marked with ben sharpiro.Holy Terror, Batman! Some Thoughts on Violence in The Dark Knight Rises<div style="text-align: center; "><img src="http://www.amoeba.com/admin/uploads/blog/Charles/dark-knight-rises-jeff-koterba-cartoon.jpeg" alt="jeff koterba batman shooting cartoon" width="500" height="343" /></div>
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There are plenty more insipid cartoons about the recent &quot;Batman shootings&quot; where Jeff Korteba's <a href="http://www.cagle.com/news/batman-shooting-2/" target="_blank">came from</a>. I don't use it as an example of the decrepitude of political cartooning (it's always been the world's lamest artform). Rather, the cartoon exemplifies a certain misreading of Christopher Nolan's <em>Dark Knight</em> trilogy*: the vigilante Batman displaces real world law and order in the superheroic fantasy. In which case, the films' audience needs a reminder of who we should fantasize about, namely the guy who really puts his life on the line. However self-critical his films are, Nolan is too much the well-ensconced liberal advocate to&nbsp;ultimately&nbsp;use the character as anything more than an imaginary supplement to the status quo. There is a reason, after all, why the revolutionary violence in all three films is treated as pure chaos for chaos' sake. Batman doesn't represent change, but a much needed (or so the narrative goes) restoration of order. <br />
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Sure, the Joker scores some good points against hypocrisy when he sounds like Walter Benjamin in advocating &quot;divine violence,&quot; a resetting of cultural values to zero, destroying the occluded underground byways of systemic violence that capital requires to continue (just think of the modern sweatshops used in manufacturing the iPhone, for example).** And Catwoman sounds like Bertolt Brecht as she gleefully portends what Bane's about to do to Gotham's stock exchange (e.g., &quot;robbing a bank's no crime compared to owning one&quot;). Nevertheless, these are the villains of the trilogy, not the heroes (Catwoman only becomes a hero when she fights to restore order). That's why Ben Shapiro over at <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/20/Spoiler-Alert-TDKR-Most-Conservative-Movie-Ever" target="_blank">Big Hollywood</a> has it right: this is a conservative trilogy. <br />
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Mon, 23 Jul 2012 06:56:24 GMThttp://www.amoeba.com/rss-link/blog/2012/07/writings-from-the-holy-texan/holy-terror-batman-some-thoughts-on-violence-in-the-dark-knight-rises.html